The market for office space is bound to decline after the pandemic. Residences might still work because of the extreme amount of existing office space. One would hope that rents in such a large project could be much lower than what has been the case with new market units over the past 5 years. You can bet SyWest has taken it all into account before making the expense of planning this proposal.

@reporter, thanks for another in-depth report about our City

This is certainly a move in the right direction but I don;t hold out much hope for affordability. Seems like this publication quoted a cost per apartment in a previous North Bayshore proposal as something like $6000K per unit plus another $150K per unit in fees, offsets etc. That may not be quite right but I think it's within 10% (good enough for a sound bite). So assuming the developer is to make any kind of profit, we're looking at ~$1M per.

There is some hope for affordability beyond the required, monitored units designated as such. Things are changing. SyWest has owned the land for a long time,. They have drastically changed their plans for the land. They must have had some reason. I would imagine they take into account a probably increase in vacancy rates for the luxury housing developments that have been the norm over the past 5 years. I then figure by induction that they are adding more units on the same land BECAUSE they project a lower rent per unit. They would just be positioning it as a non-luxury development, which until now has been all that have been being built.

Something had to give. I don't see their being sufficient demand for more of the $4K-$6K luxury units. There will be growing vacancy rates in the recent projects, but they could manage to compete with the pre existing older stock which has rented for something under $3K even though they are typically larger. So for example we might see smaller units renting for just over $3K/month, which ironically is quite an improvement in affordability.

I wish this article had a map with street names so I could tell exactly what part of North Bayshore this proposed site is talking about.